24 hours of a sort

8 january 2021 

in the mornings, becca and i work at the dining room table. i eat cereal and she puts on NPR and i am constantly reminded of carrie mae weems’s kitchen table series. 

despite never wanting to commit to a location or a home (or maybe because of it) i’m obsessed with the rituals of home life and get a particular joy out of washing dishes and doing laundry and making the bed. there is so much good texture in my life right now - the wood beams on the ceiling, the heavy, butter-yellow sheets on the bed, the speckled glaze on the navy coffee mug that i’ve temporarily adopted as mine. 

most mornings i’ve been waking up to the sun hidden behind layers and layers of grey clouds, and most days i’m convinced that it will not emerge and resolve myself to a grey day. but then most days the sun surprises me by coming out, usually in totality, and then most days when that happens there’s a shift - everything is quite literally, brighter, which gives way to a level of optimism that is one of my favorite feelings to feel. 

in some great cosmic coincidence, almost all of us are in nashville at the same time, which hasn’t been the case for at least 7 years. the funny thing is that eric is like me, where we’ll both just show up in town with little-to-no notice after having been away for years. eric is my other very-best-friend, opposite of sean in almost every way, and a nice balance for a few different friendship triads. 

the greater coincidence is how suddenly we’re all time-rich and flexible in a way that hasn’t been the case since university, and so we’re all riding around in my little red car in the afternoon sharing music and sitting in coffee shops in our masks until it’s evening and we’re the last ones left and they offer us the leftover pastries and then stumbling over to seans to stay up talking and talking and talking until 4am. 

even with sean and i being in the same city, we’re still finding ways to talk on the phone; him at his house and me in becca’s driveway in the car with the seat back and the heating on and my feet up on the dash and drinking too many cups of coffee now matter how late it gets. 

the past creeps up in its own funny ways. i’m seeing things in friends’ houses that i gave away years and years ago. vases, rugs, the green formica bowl that i’m pretty sure was my step mom’s from either the 70s when her family first moved to the US or a wedding gift from her first marriage. 

eric showed up still wearing that same sweater i gave him in 2012 or 2103 that now feels attached to his being like a character from a kids tv show. eric is in love with carlos, who i’ve never met, and we’ve been spending huge chunks of time sitting in my car all over town (one of my all time favorite activities) talking about the different ways our perceptions of love have changed over time and what a strange and interesting time it is to be in love. eric is the slowest speaker i know, which almost always makes conversations with him feel like an indulgence, like you have all the time in the world to talk. he is the friend who taught me about being interested and interesting and invested, and especially listening - all of which helps with Looking. 

the past creeps up in its own funny ways. like the way my eyes have been trained (through time and age and location change after location change) to see things differently and to see different things that maybe before would have stayed hidden to me before. i’ve been gone long enough that everything feels novel and nostalgic and i’ve been having the greatest time driving around by myself at various hours of the day adding new layers of complexity and understanding of this place. 

i need to go for more runs, i need to practice french, i definitely need to work more and spend less, but for now i’m revelling in being back in a place with so many familiar people and roads and landscapes and memories. because i’ve decided to lean into all of my indulgences for the moment, i went back to a store i discovered on one of my long, lazy drives to get two blue floral teacups and a heavy brown bowl. it was nice to notice that me and the man at the til had matching tiny gold hoop earrings in our right ears. 

the past creeps up in its own funny ways - falling asleep in the car. still trying to get pancakes from cracker barrel (everyone hates cracker barrel except me and kristen). eric and i getting kicked out of the kroger parking lot at 2am by the security guard. eating an entire box of chocolate pop tarts in one day. picking out my favourite houses as i drive through different neighbourhoods. navigating the challenges of friendship dynamics (becca and eric haven’t talked in 6 years but we’re finally all hanging out tonight; becca’s been going through a complicated 6 month breakup and kristen is, well, kristen. we’re still waiting on giovanni to come back from new york). 

in the end the best thing of all, like always, is the feeling of speeding up onto the entrance ramp, all of us cars moving in imperfect synchronicity, the hum of the engine, listening to the same song over and over all day on repeat ——— “the only thing that makes sense is driving anyway.” 

you’ve popped into my thoughts many times this week - “hm, i wonder what sophie would think about this (house, book song, restaurant, shop, neighborhood, tiktok)?” and “damn, sophie was definitely right about the rihanna album.”

can’t wait to hear what you’ve been up to.

february vignettes

i. 

it is hot in the phone booth. i sit with the door closed, back pressed against the grey felt walls which makes a loud thunk, a metal sucking noise if i lean too hard against it and it always scares me a bit even though i’ve been in here so many times to talk to you now. it is hot in the phone booth and so i open the door and immediately i am cold. i can’t decide which is less preferable. we hang up and i sit staring at my own reflection in the video box a little bit longer. still surprised when i see myself; still surprised when i touch my own skin. 

ii. 

exit 236 is esplanade and then you’ll slowly descend the ramp, gliding past the stone lions dancing in a circle around the faded pink turret that’s just over there to your right.

you wait with me at the traffic light and i watch the dalmatian sitting next to a half-naked bush in the neutral ground, listening to your voice in my ear as you tell me about your friends back home, your walks around the city and i am driving again now, pulling the car slowly over a short row of cobblestone, past the viet-cajun buffet with its yellow vinyl sign slapping the wall. we pass by the church of i am that i am, we pass by the banana leaf plants, tall as trees in their own right. 

at city park i lay nearly flat on my back, the seat warming the backs of my thighs, ankles draped over the steering wheel, watching the willow branches and their moss through the moon roof, wondering how long it’s been since i climbed a tree, wondering how long we’ve been on this call, wondering if it’s possible to somehow carry you into the next day and the next and 

iii. 

the man in the black and yellow jacket works dutifully on the power lines that run parallel to the houses along the road. he is in his white plastic hard hat, standing inside his white square bucket, attached to the arm of the bent white crane, attached to the top of the white utility truck, orange cones draped across the back like a skirt. he lowers and raises the crane arm with a little black knob. he speaks to someone on the ground i can’t see, describing his dinner from the night before. he raises his high eyebrows that extend at either corner of his face. he speaks to the man on the bicycle riding by in a white terry cloth tracksuit. 

he turns off the truck, i turn off my car. 

iv. 

i wait for eric to join me and while i listen to the engine idle i write back to alda, two weeks late. apologise first, then: 
“i’m “seeing” someone? (is that what we’re doing to each other? seeing? we can only hope)”

v. 

it is morning and you are with me at lake pontchartrain watching the sun come up over the water and then over the clouds and then over us; so many hours on the call that i can’t remember what day it started. so humid that there is no distinction between the outside air and my body. 

you drive with me around lakeview. we pass 6423 and i pull over, studiously noting the address, adding it to the list of houses i want to show you. 

you come with me through the seventh ward on our way to the bywater, and i wonder what you would get from mid-city seafood market or the circle foods store. what you can see that i can’t. 

vi. 

the woman braids in a long leopard print dress, baby wrapped to her back with it’s small head just visible above the fabric folds. it puts out a tiny hand, caressing her back, caressing that leopard print dress, diminutive fingers blending in with all those browns. the woman moves rhythmically back and forth as she braids. small steps; hair gathering slowly around her feet like a nest. 

vii. 

i fell in love so many times i could hardly see straight. with the blowing palms, the white horse’s head, eric’s second molar, the green japanese cups. i fell in love with that strange shade of green. 
we get to the water and it is quite literally sparkling and we both feel so lucky and we say to each other

we are so lucky. really, truly, says eric. 

we go to sleep at night, opposing brown backs, one slightly longer than the other, both on the cusp of 33, both strong, both breathing heavy with sleep. 

viii.

26 hours and this is the stuff of lore, i tell you. i will tell my grandkids about this one day, i say to you. 
i fell in so many times i could hardly see.  

ix.

movies in your head sound like: 

“embroider your fantasies with biography so that one is indistinguishable from the other”

x.

i want to feed you these stories slowly, drop letters into your mouth one by one, my palm up to your cheek watching you hold them between your teeth         “you know when you have a can of something and it contains a viscose substance that just touches the edge about to spill over the lip” 

“In anthropology, liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning "a threshold"[1]) is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete.[2] 

During a rite's liminal stage, participants "stand at the threshold"[3] between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way, which completing the rite establishes.”

may 1

impatient yes and wanting

the shop door calls out with bells when i enter and 6 pairs of brown eyes move to face me - 3 sitting, with hair in various states of undress; 3 standing, assessing what i could be wanting from them. yellow paint peels from the wall, exposing the gray while islamic calls to prayer from the flatscreen tv interplay with music played out loud on phones; a fake red velvet christmas bow hangs on the wall next to the tv imam like a prized trophy.

a comb parts my hair in two, a finger runs grease down my scalp and i am transported back; my mother is behind me, i am 8 or 15 or 24; she is braiding braiding braiding but i am old enough now and tough enough now to know how to keep my head still, even when the tugging might have been unbearable in the past. i am tough enough now to do all the drives alone and the planes alone and dinners alone and walking down streets late at night alone.

i cross the street in the rain; stand on the sideway, move quickly across the pavement; all the while counting down 

i stop off, buy pop tarts, eat two and throw the rest of the box away. i say goodbye to versions of this country that i am leaving again. i think about the inextricable link between our two countries, the inextricable links between us. who or how we are to each other; who or how we want to be to each other, who or how we want to be with our own selves or our own selves while we share space. i say a silent goodbye to my car, my truest home so far. i play drake, i sing, i dance, i drive recklessly enough to feel but keep one eye in the rearview just in case. i count down. 

at night, i trace the shape of the continent as we pull away skyward from the new york city lights. 
“a lot of exposed nerve” 

calling your bluff / safe for awhile in our two strange lives
coming up against a new reality (jumping off the deep end) 

“a new way, which completing the rite establishes”

14 january

re: coincidence - 

today was a very productive day, which was good because there was no other choice really. i got two good emails that i’d been waiting for (one from marc that contained exactly the response i wanted). then i went to see jasmine again and together we looked at my face in the mirror and then she gave me a few more needle pokes and i like the way my face feels. i still haven’t finished my email to fiona, but i’m on page 6 now, so hopefully it’s worth the wait. 

theoretically i’m leaving for new orleans tomorrow (today by the time you’re reading this) but somehow i’d completely forgotten that i needed to go to the storage unit to drop off all the goods i’ve been accumulating. and i’ve been avoiding going to the storage unit. 

the problem is that i left the keys at my dad’s house in pennslyvannia, and so i’d been saying i was going to go down to get the spare set from my sister, and for weeks i’ve been putting it off. but it’s leaving time now and i did have that dream where she’d asked to see me before i left, so i messaged her to ask to come over and collect the keys. she lives in the town where i went to university, which is also the town where our mom lived, which is also the town where nearly every single one of us all lived at one point. 

kelela drove with me on the way down, by which i mean you drove with me on the way down because kelela makes me think of you and on the way i started writing this letter to you in my head, pulling off the new salem highway exit, past the gas station where my mom used to buy her cigarettes and past camino where i met nic for the first time 11 years ago when i was an empty well waiting to be filled up. 

my sister lives in the same apartment complex as jess mckelley, who i liked but also didn’t like, and so i would go and sit in the parking space outside her house and read books and it felt like we’d hung out but i didn’t actually have to. 

my sister lives in an apartment with 2 other girls, one of which, my sister and one of the other roommates believes is possessed because she talks in her sleep. my sister’s room is full of shoes and handbags and scarves and belts, bracelets, rings, necklaces, tights, socks, magnificent trinkets, terrible typography. 

she told me how she’d just found out that her boyfriend is probably cheating on her, and i spent a long time admiring an impossibly tiny green quilted purse with a pearl handle while she told me the details. on top of a bookshelf, there is our mother’s obituary. on the wall to my left, there’s a painting of me, my sister, our mom and my sister’s dad. a fabricated moment of harmony that never quite existed in reality. 

my sister and my mom had a completely different relationship - an actual mother/daughter relationship, a normal one, which i am fascinated by because it stood in such stark contrast to my own relationship to my mother. 

my sister also got the good hair which she pushes away from her face in distress, large eyes full of pain and concern and i watch as she clicks her nails against the glass of her phone and then against her teeth. the ceiling fan churns slowly above while my sister, still speaking, describes her plan for confronting her boyfriend. on the end of the brass chain that controls the fan’s speed there’s a palm-sized plush red heart slowly spinning around, out of sync with the fan itself. i look at her finally and say that she should be with someone willing to work as hard for her as she was for them. she looks at me back and says she agrees, both of us knowing that in reality, this is almost never the case. 

she gives me the keys and before i leave we hug for a very long time. her skin is soft and pillowy and warm and all of a sudden i am hugging my mother, my old self, my future daughter, then my sister again. “an alive hard drive”. i want to cry for her and transfer some of the pain from her body to my own but that is not yet possible, because we were all born too early. 

round two with kelela on the way to the storage unit, and by that i mean round two with you, because kelela reminds me of you and so you and i and kelela drive down i-24 on the way to smyrna and i continue this letter to you at traffic lights and past the jail that leanne just left last week (i haven’t seen her but sean has) and past the church where eric stole a giant cross that he hid in our backyard for months. you and i and kelela drive past billboards for gun shows and the world outreach church (“god strong!”). it is 2 degrees and the wind is as unforgiving as god himself. 

the end of frontline reminds me of topeka in 1996, where my sister was born, which reminds me of sitting in the car on the side of the road in portland screaming as loud as i could which reminds of me sitting in the car on the side of a mountain in utah screaming as loud as i could which reminds me of sitting on the side of the road in new orleans on my birthday crying as hard as i could because i vowed that after that i would be done with crying. so far i’ve kept up my end of the bargain.  

you and i and kelela take the sam ridley parkway exit and pull into the storage building that i haven’t seen since the year before last, when the building was so new it wasn’t even finished yet. i switch to headphones, put bluff on repeat and it is so cold that i can feel it in my chest as i push the trolley back and forth from the car to the unit. there are other people in the building that i can hear but can’t see, which is unsettling in the dim fluorescent lighting. a box of files tumbles down as soon as i open the unit and out spill tax returns from 2004 and my grades report from 2002 and my mom’s old law school notebook “washburn university, topeka kansas” stamped into the cover. i see my favorite vases, the ones i am saving for my future house, and i wonder if i actually like these vases or if i just like their familiarity, even though in theory i am against nostalgia. i wonder how many of these belongings will ever make it to europe. 

google, which has been tracking my habits and patterns since i got back to the US, sends me a message to say it is 19 minutes to “home” and on the way home kelela and i go for a third round by which i mean you and i go for a third round because kelela makes me think of you and i am still writing this letter to you as i drive past blue hole road and haywood lane and hickory hollow parkway, past the boot factory outlet (buy 1 pair, get 2 free - who could turn down such a deal?) past the lions den adult superstore advert, past america’s best value inn where i went to bad parties with ashley in high school where people would fuck on the motel bed right in front of everyone. 

exit 54 and i’m thinking about the dreams all the women in my family have been trading for generations and wonder if my sister has confronted her boyfriend yet and how it was a long drive but i’m glad to have seen her before i leave for new orleans and how going to the storage unit was actually not nearly as bad as i thought it would be. 

 “i’m so tired but i can’t ignore that it’s not enough right now” and so i decide to get a large unsweet iced tea but not an ice cream cone.

i search the center console for change and don’t find any. instead, in the white light of the drive-thru window is the silvery glint of the keys i thought i’d left behind.